Research has revealed that Saturn’s rings are much younger than Saturn, which was born 4.5 billion years ago.
Space science media Space.com reported on the 15th (local time) the results of a study on the age of Saturn’s rings by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. The results of this study were recently published in the international journal Science Advances.
Researchers studied the dust accumulation results to derive the age of Saturn’s rings. Small rocky particles regularly pass through the solar system and accumulate in thin layers on icy systems such as planets, moons, asteroids and Saturn’s rings. In order to determine the age of Saturn’s rings, the researchers studied how quickly dust accumulates in the icy layers that make up the rings.
A research team led by Professor Sasha Kemp from the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed 163 dust particles collected by the ‘Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA)’ from the Cassini spacecraft for NASA’s Saturn probe between 2004 and 2017 to find out how fast the this dust is moving. found that it accumulates with
“If you have a clean carpet, you have to wait. Dirt will build up on the carpet. The same goes for rings,” Professor Sasha Kemp said in a statement.
The researchers measured the accumulation of dust in Saturn’s rings and estimated that less than 1 gram of dust accumulates per square foot per year, putting the age of the rings at less than 400 million years.
Since Saturn is known to be 4.5 billion years old, we know that Saturn’s rings are very recent, which suggests that the rings may disappear quickly, Space.com said.
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Saturn’s rings first attracted attention when astronomer Galileo Galilei first discovered them with a telescope in 1610, and then attracted more attention in the 1800s when it was discovered that Saturn’s rings were not actually solid but made up of smaller individual particles.
“We know roughly how old the rings are, but we haven’t solved the other problems. We still don’t know how these rings formed in the first place,” he said. “If the rings are transient and dynamic, why are we seeing them now? So big. It’s luck,” said Professor Camp.
